Morgan directly asked Paul if he would have actually ended surveillance programs if he were president.

Paul said he would still want intelligence gathering, but it would be done in a more transparent way, maintaining that the current surveillance program are unquestionably unconstitutional.

He directly told NSA defenders that they are simply “justifying dictatorship.”

Paul dismissed the use of a FISA court as a significant enough of a check on the executive branch. He said this program is undeniably “destroying the Constitution,”, and posed a question to anyone who defends the widespread surveillance.

Ron Paul:

“So my question should be, to all of you who defend this nonsense is, what should the penalty be for the people who destroy the constitution. They’re always worrying about how they’re going to destroy the American citizens who tell the truth to let us know what’s going on. We ask the question, what is the penalty for the people who deliberately destroy the constitution and rationalize and say, ‘we have to do it for security.’

Well, you know what Franklin said about that, you end up losing your security and you lose your freedoms too. So I think we’ve embarked on a very, very dangerous course. The American people are with us on this, it’s totally out of control, and I would say if you’re confused about what we should do, just read the constitution. What’s wrong with that? If you don’t like it, get people to repeal it and change the constitution, but not just to deny it.

We go to war without a declaration. We totally ignore the constitution. That is what our problem is today — we have no rule of law, and people say, ‘well, just let secret Courts do this,; and the governments to know everything, and the American people have no privacy. I mean you’re — that reflects intimidation, people are insecure, and think that we’ll need more authoritarianism. You’re justifying dictatorship, is what you’re doing.“